Series of Turning Points Limited Death Toll at Oregon Mall

Leslie King, left, and Tenille Beseda carried flowers on Wednesday to place at an entrance to the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Clackamas, Ore., the scene of a fatal shooting the day before.Credit
Greg Wahl-Stephens/Associated Press

CLACKAMAS, Ore. — Law enforcement officials here expressed a kind of bleak gratitude on Wednesday that a masked 22-year-old gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle and extra magazines of ammunition did not kill or wound more people in an attack at a suburban mall filled with holiday shoppers on Tuesday afternoon.

But a close friend of the gunman also expressed shock and bewilderment that someone she remembered as so mild-mannered in many ways — never even raising his voice or getting angry through about 10 years of friendship — could have suddenly turned into a killer.

Three people died in the assault, including the gunman — identified by the Clackamas County sheriff as Jacob Tyler Roberts — by suicide, as the police swarmed into the Clackamas Town Center Mall. But with as many as 10,000 people crowding the mall, the toll, the police and mall managers said, could have been far higher. The semiautomatic AR-15 rifle that the authorities said Mr. Roberts carried — stolen on Tuesday from someone Mr. Roberts knew — apparently jammed at one point, said Sheriff Craig Roberts. Shoppers and store owners locked down and took shelter, and the police arrived quickly, with as many as 100 officers on site within minutes.

“Less time to harm others,” Sheriff Roberts said in describing the attack’s cumulative turning points of happenstance and training, at a news conference in this city just southeast of Portland.

Photo

Employees and shoppers waited to be allowed to leave an REI store at the Clackamas Town Center Mall on Tuesday after a gunman opened fire.Credit
Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian, via Associated Press

The victims were identified as Steve Forsyth, 45, a youth sports coach who owned a business in the mall, and Cindy Ann Yuille, 54, who was apparently shopping. A third person, Kristina Shevchenko, remained hospitalized in serious condition with at least one bullet wound, the authorities said. The police described her as a juvenile, but did not release her age.

Some of the details that emerged on Wednesday — a drive to the mall, a crowded food court, a hurried walk inside, assault rifle in hand, screams and chaos in a panicked search for shelter — were unique to the case but numbingly similar to other recent mass shootings, notably the killings in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in July. Twelve were killed in that rampage, but the gunman’s semiautomatic weapon also jammed, law enforcement authorities believe, limiting the number who might have been killed.

The authorities said, based on witness interviews and mall surveillance tapes, that Mr. Roberts arrived at the shopping center just before 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, wearing what they described as a “hockey-style mask” and outfitted with a load-bearing vest, which allowed him to carry a supply of ammunition. He parked his 1996 Volkswagen Jetta near an entrance to the food court. After firing as many as 60 rounds — despite the gun jamming — he retreated to a corridor in the mall and turned the weapon on himself. Only one gun was recovered, Sheriff Roberts said.

The mall remained closed on Wednesday, the possessions of shoppers left behind in panic, locked away for retrieval as the police searched for evidence. A mall manager said the shopping center’s Web site would be updated as to when people could return for their items.

“I saw him yesterday, two or three hours before the shooting,” said Ms. Eheler, 26. “He said he was going to help a friend move. It was around noon. Something was off. There was a strange look in his eyes, like a stone-cold look. It was not him.”

Ms. Eheler said that in that last moment she saw Mr. Roberts, she interrupted a phone call with her mother to ask him what was wrong. “He said that he would talk to me about it when he got back,” she said. “He had a plastic bag in his hand and walked out the door.”

Mr. Roberts had no known prior criminal history, the authorities said. They said he had been a crime victim of some sort, but did not have more details. His Facebook page offered a mixture of the ordinary — he liked the Beatles, the Beastie Boys and the Pittsburgh Pirates — with hints of something darker.

Mr. Roberts said, in a paragraph about himself, that he was an alcoholic, but then dismissed that statement with a joke. “I like to think of myself as a bit of an adrenaline junkie,” he also wrote. The cover photo on his Facebook page is of a wall that bears the phrase “Follow Your Dreams” with the word “Cancelled” emblazoned over it. Among his “likes” was shooting.

Mr. Roberts’s family life had been unsettled. Ms. Eheler said he had lived with her parents for a year or two and was good friends with her brother. He had “chosen,” she said, not to have a relationship with his aunt Tami Roberts, who helped raise him after the death of his mother, from cancer, shortly before he turned 3.

Sheriff Roberts said that Mr. Roberts’s home in Portland was searched, as was his car, which was found in the parking lot of the mall. Sheriff Roberts declined to discuss what the searches may have turned up. The police have said that none of the law enforcement officials who responded to the mall fired a shot.

Ms. Eheler said Mr. Roberts had recently mentioned to her that there was a possibility that a Greek gyro shop where he had worked in Portland, called Big Bertha’s, might be handed down to him by the owner, who was one of his closest friends. But she said Mr. Roberts told her within the last month that it had been sold, and that was not what he was hoping for. “He seemed disappointed,” Ms. Eheler recalled.

She said he had imminent plans to move to Hawaii. “He was just taking a backpack and was going to live there for a year or so as the free spirit he was,” Ms. Eheler said. She also noted that Mr. Roberts aspired to become a firefighter.

Workers at Big Bertha’s, where the slogan above the shop door reads “Eat or Die,” declined to be interviewed.

The families of the victims issued statements through the Clackamas County sheriff’s office saying they were grieving and would have no comment.

A version of this article appears in print on December 13, 2012, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Series of Turning Points Kept Mall Toll Lower Than Feared. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe